TARP FUNDS USED TO PAY WALL STREET BONUSES

Written by Jim McGrath Tuesday, 04 August 2009 16:27

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The program Treasury designed to spur lending and rescue us from the greatest financial crisis since the Depression has been misused and abused by the same Wall Street geniuses that got us into this mess in the first place.  They literally used the TARP funds designed to grease banks' lending wheels in order to jumpstart the economy, to instead hoard, make themselves more able to swallow up lesser competitors, and most outrageous, paid billions in bonuses to the incompetents who engineered this crisis. They could not bring themselves to use our tax money for that noble (while still making a profit) purpose. No, they went for excess and selfish greed, again to reckless and possibly criminal behavior, in violation of their legal fiduciary duties. Then, they pursued an even worse form of self-aggrandizement than before the crisis, as it is compounded by the fact that all this was done with taxpayer money, whose purposes were spelled out -- and they made clear when they took it -- that they understood the public good's purpose for the billions bestowed them in capital injections, loans, etc, etc.  By now we recognize these as no longer stable banking and investment practices, but blind greed and excess they have long degenerated into, without any hint of repentance, reform or a return to sound behavior.  Using money granted for the public good to further reward their insane risk taking and management with billions in bonuses for practices they have grown to love, is indeed, stranger than fiction. Unfit by their own abilities to weather the crisis they caused, instead of going out of business as others do, they are now surviving, thriving, and continuing to reward perverse incentives. In the end, they are bound to become the albatross around the American economy that only letting them fail or breaking them up will remove. See these key expose articles from The Business Insider by John Carney (below) or see them at

http://www.businessinsider.com/yep-the-bailout-was-based-on-a-big-fat-lie-2009-8\\ 

 and http://www.businessinsider.com/barofsky-discovers-the-bailout-was-based-on-a-big-fat-lie-2009-7